Gender is not a fact about persons that we must take as fixed and essential (and then build our social institutions around that fact). Gender, for humans, is socially constructed; an externally imposed hierarchy: male or female. The human personality is a spectrum – and allows us to more or less conform to the gender norms associated with our gender, or not.

But, we do not need gender. We would be better off without it. Gender as a hierarchy with two positions operates to naturalize and perpetuate the subordination of female people to male people, and constrains the development of individuals of both sexes. And reconceiving of gender as an identity spectrum represents no improvement!

Many years ago when gmail was just launched in beta, my first email was the welcome email from Google. Over time I had an inbox in the thousands. In the last few years I tried to get to 0 again, but failed. Now I have learned about GTD and also a thing our two from The Behavioral Science Guys, so I decided to actually track my, uhm, progress publicly.

PS: This is done by having a Google Script write to a Google Spreadsheet that generates a public Google Spreadsheet Chart. Here is the code:

Customer satisfaction research might be a waste of time if you only try to find the areas you want to improve for existing customers: they are still customers! You can probably be more effective in improving the aspects that cause existing customers to go elsewhere – or, even more importantly, not even come to you!

The following article explains that studying-results can be significantly improved not only by the brain-based methods I am a strong proponent for, but also by actual retention qualifiers.

Using Brain Scans to Predict Future Test Performance

Will a brain scan reveal how well you’ve studied for a big test? Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory have demonstrated that the brain’s electrical activity, detectable via electroencephalogram (EEG), predicts how well studied material has been incorporated into memory, and, thus, how well subjects performed on memory tests.

The researchers asked 23 people to attempt to memorize a list of words while undergoing brain scanning. The average subject recalled 45% of the words on the list. The EEG data correctly predicted which five of the 23 subjects would beat the competition, remembering 72% of the words on average.

“If you had someone learning new material and you were recording the EEG, you might be able to tell them, ‘You’re going to forget this, you should study this again,’ or tell them, ‘OK, you got it and go on to the next thing,’ ” chief researcher Laura Matzen said in a statement.

Matzen presented her findings at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference in Chicago. This second phase of research will determine the effectiveness of various types of research and training methods.

Regarding the new (European) law about cookies on websites I have this to say: while I am pro transparency, I believe that one should not force transparency. In order to deal with the problem of having to opt-in users I suggest you write a good disclaimer and wait until browsers solve the cookie opt-in problem by for example keeping a list of pre-authorized sites (like Google Analytics) or by subscribing to public or paid white/black lists that are auto-updated in the browser. This should not be a human choice on every site, but a general “setting” and/or trusting an intermediary source to help users make that decision in an automated way.

Because attention is so closely connected to our brain’s basic wiring, it can be difficult to recognize our own patterns of giving attention – patterns we’ve been absorbing since birth. Yet different cultures do allocate attention differently. For example: psychologist Richard E. Nisbett concluded (in his underwater scene study) that East Asians focus on relationships while Westerners tend to see isolated objects rather than the connections between them. What is your brain (not) wired for? What do you “see” and are you aware off what you miss?

As you might already know, every year near my birthday I post the proclamation for myself for the coming year. When I was an old teenager I was spending serious time connecting to my mystic roots through meditation. When I was 18 I predicted my 31ste year would be my year of Money – I was excited about that my whole life – but got very nervous every month it was getting closer. Little did I know how right I was so many years ago. Here is how: at 24 I slowly made the transition to actually be an adult. Now in the last year (mantra: introspection) I believe I have finally gained the basic knowledge (about myself) I expected to gain in my life.

For this year my mantra is: consolidation (between yin & yang). I have already realized that most mantra’s were spot on, but in retrospect in such an incredibly different way than expected. So, I have spent significant effort over the last weeks to realize the way I could go about interpreting my own words of wisdom. They didn’t make sense to me until I read an article in a management magazine this Sunday afternoon in my mothers garden which had a line in it that made me realize what I have unconsciously already set out to do: “weet wat je wil en creeer een kans” (which translates as: “know what you want and create an opportunity to do it”). I will rewrite it in my own words (from the last 2 years) as: understand my passion and create an environment in which I can live it – and I hope in 12 months or so to fully understand how that relates to consolidation – because literally the first day after my birthday, it felt much more like the year of separation 🙁

To gain some perspective/inspiration hese will guide me:

Life Vision:

I exist, as all else exist, because all else exists. I am unbound and infinite.

Life Mission:

Bringing about balanced success that leads to and supports growth in the
four success areas – mental, spiritual, physical and financial – through
creating choices and understanding their impact and consequences (on and
for myself and those around me).

While I personally really like the concept – and it is more usefull if all my communicationpartners are using it (remember the faith of Google Wave) – it has, as can be expected from Google, a highly technical cool-factor with an awesome potential; but I do feel there is a human factor called discipline that simply can not be enforced. Compare my Google Contacts, I have about 20% of my 5000+ contacts properly sorted in the broad categories: friends, family, business, employees, strangers (people I did not personally meet) and some interest groups like: libertarian, important (people to consider/follow), etc. And in this way Google Circles will fail to fully support me simply because I will not have the commitment to work the system to its technical perfection.

I guess I’m still waiting for artificial intelligence…

Besides lacking the first-movers advantage (switching social network providers is still a very big hurdle), there will be the problem of handling the social feedback from those that are not in my circles where they expected to be in – and thus miss things that their desired peers will receive. (Note: facebook “solved” this by giving us just 2 choices: public or private.)